Pro-social actions are often driven by emotional factors. For instance, emotions have been shown to play a decisive role in the way we judge the fairness of a situation (affect-as-information theory: e.g., Clore et al., 2001; Storbeck and Clore, 2008), and, thus, how we make decisions. Specific emotions like anger have also been shown to stimulate the motivation to fight injustice (Lerner et al., 2015). At the individual level, people might undertake altruistic actions as a way to relieve themselves from these negative emotions (what Cialdini (1991) calls ‘reflexive distress’) but also because these actions are expected by the social norms (‘normative distress’). Indeed, pro-social actions are usually taken in social contexts, and the perception of one’s behavior by third parties might hinder or facilitate the adoption of pro-social behaviors. Understanding the determinants of the perception of altruistic behaviors is thus a key research question to support pro-social actions in collective settings.

 

In the current study, Woo and Feldman (2024) aim to replicate the seminal work of Barasch et al. (2014), who showed that third parties hold more favorable views of agents undertaking pro-social actions when the latter are motivated by emotions. More precisely, the authors aim to replicate two studies of the original work by conducting a well-powered online experiment (US participants, Prolific, N=1,164). First, they will investigate whether donors who exhibit higher distress regarding the suffering of others are perceived as more moral and authentically concerned for others. Second, they will analyze whether individuals who expect material or reputational benefits from their altruistic deeds are perceived by third parties as less moral than those who act for emotional reasons. In addition to these two replication objectives, the authors propose extensions with pre-registered hypotheses that are inspired by Study 2 from the original work. They seek to investigate whether people are seen as more other-focused when they undertake a prosocial action (donation) and under different expected rewards (material, reputational, emotional benefits).

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two external reviewers and the recommender. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.

 

List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

1. Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., Berman, J. Z., & Small, D. A. (2014). Selfish or selfless? On the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 393-413. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037207

 

2. Cialdini, R. B. (1991). Altruism or egoism? That is (still) the question. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 124-126. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1207/s15327965pli0202_3

 

3. Clore, G. L., Gasper, K., Garvin, E., & Forgas, J. P. (2001). Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition.

 

4. Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799-823. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115043

 

5. Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2008). Affective arousal as information: How affective arousal influences judgments, learning, and memory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1824-1843. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2008.00138.x

 

6. Woo, T. L. & Feldman, G. (2024). Revisiting the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Barasch et al. (2014) Studies 3 and 6. In principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/d5bmp

Shame and guilt are powerful negative emotions that are notable for their external vs. internal focus: while shame is generally experienced in response to public scrutiny, guilt arises from a self-directed, private evaluation. In a formative study, Smith et al. (2002) asked whether the level of public exposure influenced levels of shame and guilt arising from one's transgressions, and found that, compared to private situations, public exposure was more strongly associated with shame than with guilt. Since then, these findings have had significant implications for theories and applications of moral psychology.

 

In the current study, Zhang et al.  propose to directly replicate Smith et al. (2002) in a large online sample. In particular, they will revisit the critical questions from Study 1, asking (a) whether public exposure affects the magnitude of shame and guilt over one’s misconduct, and (b) whether stronger moral belief increases guilt and shame over one’s misconduct.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

1. Smith, R. H., Webster, J. M., Parrott, W. G., & Eyre, H. L. (2002). The role of public exposure in moral and nonmoral shame and guilt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 138-159. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.83.1.138

 

2. Zhang, Y., Cheung, F. C., Wong, H.T., Yuen, L. Y., Sin, H. C., Chow, H. T. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the role of public exposure and moral beliefs on feelings of shame and guilt: Replication of Smith et al. (2002)’s Study 1. https://osf.io/j7kt2

A considerable body of research in behavioural economics has established the existence of ambiguity avoidance: the tendency for people, when given a choice between two options, to choose the option for which there is greater certainty about the probabilities of certain outcomes occurring. In a seminal study, Curley, Yates, and Abrams (1986) explored potential psychological explanations of ambiguity avoidance, contrasting five hypotheses: hostile nature (the anticipation that more ambiguous options are biased against oneself), other-evaluation (the anticipation that one’s decision will be evaluated by others), self-evaluation (the anticipation that one's decision will be self-evaluated in the future), forced-choice (in which the less ambiguous option is selected only when all other considerations are equal), and a more general uncertainty avoidance associated with risk aversion. The results favoured other-evaluation as the most promising explanation, with implications in the following decades for research in social psychology, judgment and decision making, behavioural economics, consumer behaviour, and cognitive psychology.

 

In the current study, Yiu and Feldman (2022) plan to revisit the psychological basis of ambiguity avoidance in a large online sample through a replication of key studies from Curley et al. (1986), including extensions to increase methodological rigour and to explore the relationship between ambiguity avoidance and hostility bias, anticipated future regret, and post-choice social judgment from others, as well as trait measures of risk tolerance and ambiguity tolerance.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

1. Curley, S. P., Yates, J. F. & Abrams, R. A. (1986). Psychological sources of ambiguity avoidance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 38, 230-256. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(86)90018-X

  

2. Yiu, S. Y. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the psychological sources of ambiguity avoidance: 
Replication and extensions of Curley, Yates, and Abrams (1986), in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/wb3hc

The psychology of meat-eating offers a fascinating window into moral reasoning, cognition and emotion, as well as applications in the shift toward more sustainable and ethical alternatives to meat consumption. One key observation in this field is the so-called “meat paradox” – the tendency for people to simultaneously eat meat while also caring about animals. One way to resolve this conflict and reduce cognitive dissonance is for people to separate the concept of meat from animals, mentally disengaging from the origins of meat in order to make the act of consumption more ethically acceptable. Another potential explanation is a motivated “denial of mind”, in which people believe that animals lack the mental capacity to experience suffering; therefore, eating an animal is not a harm that the animal will experience. In support of the latter hypothesis, Bastian et al (2012) found that animals judged to have greater mental capacities were also judged to less edible, and that simply reminding meat eaters that an animal was being raised for the purposes of meat consumption led to denial of its mental capacities.

 

Using a large-scale online design in 1000 participants, Jacobs et al. (2022) propose a replication of two studies from Bastian et al. (2012): asking how the perceived mental capabilities of animals relates to both their perceived edibility and the degree of moral concern they elicit, and whether learning that an animal will be consumed influences perceptions of its mental capabilities. Among various exploratory analyses, the authors will also examine whether the perception of animal minds (in animals consumed for meat) varies systematically according to species.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/cru4z

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

1. Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211424291

 

2. Jacobs, T. P., Wang, M., Leach, S., Loong, S. H., Khanna, M., Chan, K. W., Chau, H. T., Tam, Y. Y. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the motivated denial of mind to animals used for food: Replication and extension of Bastian et al. (2012), in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/cru4z

Numeracy – the ability to understand and work with numbers – is associated with a wide range of social and health-related outcomes, including socioeconomic status, employment, literacy, reasoning, and life satisfaction. A substantial body of evidence has also shown links between numeracy and decision-making, prompting the question of how it relates to finer-grained measures of reasoning, judgment and affect/emotion.

 

In the current study, Zhu and Feldman propose to replicate four influential experiments from a study by Peters et al. (2006), which demonstrated links between numeracy and performance on a variety of decision-making tasks, including attribute framing, frequency-percentage framing, susceptibility to affective influences, and various cognitive biases. The authors also propose several extended questions, including refinements of the original hypotheses and an examination of the relationship between numeracy and confidence in numeric judgments (subjective numeracy).

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/r73fb

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

 

1. Zhu, M. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the links between numeracy and decision making: Replication of Peters et al. (2006) with an extension examining confidence, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/r73fb

 

2. Peters, E., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, C. K., Mazzocco, K., & Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407-413. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01720.x